the Birds (Rhyme of the Ancient Merino)

It's been a long time between updates on The Rhyme of The Ancient Merino, been a bit distracted just lately with the making of the Highly Strung giant puppet.

Anyway, here is a clip "making of" clip of sorts with a few shots on the birds, a mix of raw green-screen shots and some with the green keyed out.


The landing on the fence post shot I actually filmed in reverse....starting with the bird propped on the fence and then flying him back out from there. And somewhere in the middle of the shot (and at about 2 in the morning) one of the wings fell off. Distaster! There's a reason why rusty metal is not the animation material of choice for stop-motion. After a few high-stress minutes of cussing, soul-searching and consideration of the awful possibility that the entire shot might need to be redone, I managed to re-attach the wing with a discrete splint, get the bird back in position, finish off the shot and go to bed. Hot glue saves the day....again. See if you can work out which frame this all happened on.

Making a bird

A couple of shots here of the bird model from the Merino film. This is by far the smallest of the models (being a life-sized crow as opposed to a life-sized sheep or goat).

You can see it here ... in construction (before the feathers have been added to the PVC pipe and armature wire skeleton)

Here it is all feathered up (it could maybe do with a a few more on the wings).

And, finally, here it is being held by Lani in a high-tech, green-screen suit that will allow it to be seamlessly comped into whatever background we choose. Fancy!